What should we do about people misplacing our work?
Added 2019-01-17 12:50:18 +0000 UTC
As many of our followers should already know, for many months now we’ve reiterated that there is no longer any association between our work and whatever the Zootopia fandom has become. Since we, the original authors, firmly deny connection with the Disney movie, it should be spontaneous for readers to refrain from making up imaginary ones, for the only purpose to find peace and relief in their fandomistic dimension. However, although the problem is progressively decreasing over time, thanks to our unwavering determination to defend what belongs to us, a small part of the people who follow us doesn’t seem to understand (or, more likely, deliberately chooses to ignore) how things really are.
You also have noticed, we hope, that in the past weeks we haven’t proposed the figure of “Jack Savage” as the fandom, one fine day, has decided to adopt him. Except for our comics still in progress, OD and JSF, our Jack not only doesn’t show the original features of the old artwork, but he’s also called Turner, which is his original surname since his birth as our character, the same surname that will be used permanently in the next comic with him and Cynthia. And yet, there are still people on Tumblr and DeviantArt who label our posts with the magic word “zootopia” (there are even those who still manage to call Cynthia “Skye” 🤷🏻♀️). As we’ve already explained once (it should go without saying, actually), this fact not only bothers us, but it also represents a problem, because it perpetrates a misunderstanding which is going to damage us and our work in the long run.
For this reason, today we are here to ask you your opinion on this unfortunate matter. By clicking here, you will be taken to a poll where you can choose from various options the way you think we should act against this category of people described above.
We decided to write this post now because even the art for Cynthia’s birthday, published yesterday, was considered like zootopian material by some people. As authors, we consider this matter (along with many other similas ones) very serious and annoying. Surely, there are artists who don’t mind if their work is attached to the “Zootopia pool”, but we are not this kind of people. We don’t want the old fandom we once belonged to, to take something which doesn’t belong to it. As authors who take their work seriously, it’s our duty to preserve and safeguard the identity and the belonging of our characters, even if this may appear insane, uncomfortable, ungrateful or any adjective you might like to attribute to our attitude. Just because they are anthropomorphic animals, and just because we once created comics about Zootopia, it doesn’t mean every other animal that comes out of our fantasy is still an extension of this fictional universe. Insisting on holding onto this belief is nothing but disrespectful.